Yesterday was a sad day, as it was our pastor’s last Sunday at our church. Rev. (Dr.) Mark Snodgrass has been our pastor for close to 12 years. His children, Paul and Luke, were 4 and 1 when he and Lauren came to Bentonville in January 2011. Now they are teenagers, and this is the only home they know.

Pastoral changes are never easy. I was trying to figure out how many I’ve been through since I’ve been in the Church of the Nazarene. I think it’s around eight, though one of those happened while we were overseas. Mark is the pastor I’ve had longest, which perhaps makes it most difficult.

I haven’t been in any positions of church leadership during Mark’s tenure, as I pulled out of church leadership long ago, believing it wasn’t the ministry I was meant to be in. But as a Life Group leader, I interacted with our lead pastor quite a bit. He came to us right at the time I was starting to self-publish. I gave Mark several of my books. When I published books on Christian topics, I asked for guidance from him about whether my writing was doctrinally sound.

From time to time, I would have lunch with Mark. Once I retired in January 2019, my trips from home to Bentonville greatly reduced but, not having a job to do, I suggested we get together for coffee when I made the 13 mile drive for some purpose and when he had time and I had time. This resulted in us meeting at the Bentonville Library around four times a year. Those were good times. We discussed church topics, politics, social types—just about anything.

In these conversations, it became quite apparent that our politics differed. So did our belief in what I call social styles. Mark is big on community. I’m big on individualism. He’s an extrovert (a social style also called “Expressive”). I’m an introvert (a social style also called analytical). I tend to crave being alone and thrive working by myself.  I embraced self-checkout at Wal-Mart, not because I want to do that work but because that means one less person I need to talk with each time I went shopping. Mark loves to be among people and probably thrives when working in committee. But despite these differences, we became good friends. I will miss these occasional meetings.

In November, 2020, Mark asked if I would write a history of our church’s Centennial. I agreed, and began work in January 2021. I made some amazing discoveries, which I shared with Mark along the way. He seemed pleased with the work I showed him, though some I didn’t tell, but let him see them as posts on the church’s website. The impact of those surprises were good. I don’t think Mark ever felt he made a mistake in his appointment of the “church historian”. That’s the closest I got to church leadership during his pastorate.

Mark has been called to a strong church in the Kansas City area. That’s only four hours away, and Kansas City was once Lynda’s and my home. Is getting together possible sometime in the future? Part of the process of a pastoral change is the letting go. The pastor has to let his/her current church go in order to fully minister to the new church, though of course a pastor never totally forgets those he/she ministers to. But the church also has to let the pastor go, not keep bugging him/her as they seek to acclimate to their new congregation.

The separation is hard, especially after twelve years. But I’ve prayed that God will confirm his call to his new church as he ministers there.

Godspeed Mark, Lauren, Paul, and Luke.

A few posts ago, I wrote about science and faith, and how they are not incompatible. I stand by that statement. Yesterday, a writer friend I know only through on-line contacts posted this meme, which came from The Other 98%.

Let’s set aside for the moment the wall of separation between church and state. Let’s also set aside the implication that those of the church should have no part in things of the state. Those are subjects for different posts.

The part of this picture that I don’t agree with is “Science belongs here” with the arrow pointing at “State”.  This implies that science doesn’t belong in religion. Or, perhaps, that science is incompatible with religion because religion relies on faith, not scientific evidence and method.

To which I respond with a big, fat, “So?”

As stated in my last post, faith is belief in something for which there is no evidence. I can’t prove there is a God, who created the universe, of which mankind is a small part. But neither can the atheist prove there is not a God. Both rely on faith concerning God’s existence or non-existence.

But why would anyone say science doesn’t belong in the church, in religion? Do such people really think that Christians (or, as some people say in a non-sectarian way, religionists) should not study science, should not believe in science, should not rely on science. Or are they saying that if you are in the church (since the meme frames the argument in a church context, though it does in fact show a synagogue and a mosque though only mentioning “church”), you cannot possibly believe in science? What dreck. What utter garbage.

Of course, perhaps this meme is saying that the state is built upon science, or that science maintains the state.  That also seems like a strange conclusion.

It’s true that at various times in the past the church (i.e. the Roman Catholic church, perhaps others) strongly resisted advances in science and misunderstood how science and faith interacted and could exist very well together. Nowadays, I don’t think that is still true in the main. Those mistakes have, for the most part, been eradicated from the church. At least, it has from the part of the Church Universal that I belong to. I don’t try to keep up with all the branches of the Church Universal.

To paraphrase what I said in that last post, science is experimenting, observing, concluding, and reporting, bit by bit, and so expanding man’s knowledge about the universe. It is involved in what you can prove. Okay, some things that science tells us are theories, based on reasonable assumptions but still lacking some final piece of proof.

Faith takes over for things that don’t need to be proved. What a truncated existence it is for those who have no faith in anything or claims to need evidence for anything and everything.

I hope all Christians study science and so show the foolishness of this meme. Much of my career as a civil engineer was based on science and mathematics. The Other 98% seem to be saying that I can’t be a Christian. Sorry, folks, you’re wrong.

I find my faith to be enhanced by science. My practice as a Christian is so much more meaningful to me because I believe in science.

The wedge between Christians and science is not being driven by Christians, but by memes like this.